Quote:
Originally Posted by bookandswordblog
…. I am trying to avoid general claims until I have actually looked at the hundred or so known examples, because typologies don't always follow all their own rules when you start to look at them. ...
|
I agree. Even with a hundred examples, they will not be uniform.
Rant/ One thing I notice about more than a few collectors of ethnographic edged weapons is a rush to categorize. Strict taxonomic classification only works if there is substantial uniformity in the features of a given class. We forget that each item is unique, made by an artisan, made for a patron. Design patterns may be a starting point, but there is often great variation across artisans and time frame. Artisans try something new occasionally! We also have the cross-cultural influence that occurs at “crossroads” places. That’s where classification really breaks down. Let’s not forget about simultaneous invention or discovery. That happens all the time.
We really want to give names to things, but that can be super hard to pin down. In the end, we can talk about clusters of features that “usually” or “sometimes” or “mostly never” appear together. We give the cluster a name for our convenience of communication, not necessarily because it matches any ground truth. /endRant